KICK IT | JENLISA

125

Lisa

After a curt nod and exchanging goodbyes, I led Jennie out. Her spine trembled, and her breath came out in short, and wheezing gasps, so I squeezed her waist with my elbow. The music and bar conversations muffled into the night.

"I'm sorry." Closing her eyes, Jennie released a long sigh that slumped her shoulders. "I should have mentioned to you how they blame me for Taehyung's death."

"As long as you don't." I patted her hand. "Taehyung's PTSD was bigger than you, Jennie. Remember what Dr. Choi said."

The rehabilitation centre's director was a lovely, older woman named Hae-sook Kim. A shrewd businesswoman, Hae-sook gave up her position on a software company's oversight board to accept the director's position. She invited Jennie and me to meet some counsellor candidates, who spoke candidly about the impacts of PTSD and CTS being broader than a single individual.

I watched Jennie like a hawk during Hae-sook's interviews. She got along well with Dr. Choi, a specialist on survivor's guilt. Many soldiers suffered from it, but I convinced Jennie to start seeing her once a week. Her sessions were tough, silencing her into her recessive mode, but she slowly started to exert kindness on herself. She hadn't accepted that PTSD was larger than she and Taehyung combined, but I hoped that she would. Despite her initial progress, Jennie still had days where she bore responsibility for losing Taehyung. Having it slapped in her face, couldn't have felt worse.

Fucking audacity her former mother-in-law had, pointing the blame at Jennie. The tears welling up in Jennie's eyes indicated that we were in for a heavier night. Other than feeling sorry for her enduring displaced blame, I didn't mind. I wanted to be the rock her waves crashed against, the hand that held hers, and the heart that beat in sympathy for hers. It wasn't my place to fix her or placate her emotions, but weather through the storm next to her.

"Come on." I pulled back and kissed her forehead. "Let's go home."

As I expected, Jennie cried during the drive home. My emotions shifted from pissed off at one of the worst displays of insensitivity I'd seen to sympathetic that it was directed at Jennie. She had come a long way in a short month together, no longer hiding when she cried. No matter how ugly she claimed she look, congestion running out her nose, her mouth puffy, eyes red, and cheeks raw, her beauty was in her strength.

"I'm sorry." she whispered and wiped her cheeks. "I ruined tonight."

I parked my truck in the garage with a sigh. The rehab centre's foundation was providing a network of multiple physical and mental health services, free of charge for discharged soldiers. If Taehyung's parents didn't want his name associated with those efforts, I respected their decision, but I drew a line at accusations of blame.

From my outside perspective, Taehyung's suicide wasn't his fault either, so there was no way it could've been Jennie's.

"You didn't." I laced my fingers inside hers and helped her down. "I'm sorry they feel that way, and they're flat-out wrong. Let's get you upstairs."

Part of getting to know Jennie meant learning how to help during her dark episodes of self-sabotage and misplaced blame. Initially, she wasn't vocal about expressing what she needed, but I pressed as gently as I knew how. Meaning that I forced it out of her one episode at a time. "Bath or shower?" I closed the bathroom door behind us.

Dr. Choi told me that Jennie experienced severe survivor's guilt. It made sense, because of the way she lost Taehyung. She felt guilty moving forward in her life at the expense that she left him behind. I wasn't short on confidence to worry if I replaced him and, once I fully understood her situation, I never wanted her to forget the memory of him.